Verizon Business and IR Magazine have released a report that suggests communications technologies are the key to corporate social responsibility. The report says 87 percent of investor relations professionals who responded to a study said that they believe companies can use better carbon management to improve shareholder value.

"This study shows the increasing weight that investor relations professionals are giving to climate change issues," said Roberta Mackintosh, the executive director of global voice, unified communications and collaboration at Verizon Business, said in a press release. "

The approximately 150 respondents to the study seem to be adopting new communication technologies to improve their own carbon management. Seventy-one percent are already using web conferencing, for instance.

Throughout the study, investor relations professionals made it very clear that shareholders are looking for improvements to their investments' social responsibility — especially in environmental issues. Forty-five percent of the respondents noted that shareholders are now engaged in their companies' overall CSR policies. Another 43 percent reported that those policies already include some level of carbon reduction strategies.

In response to investors' growing focus on environmental issues, an increasing number of investor organizations are following the trend. Many institutional investors have joined organizations the Carbon Disclosure Project and Principles for Responsible Investment. The Principles of Responsible Investment is an agreement to follow certain investing guidelines regarding carbon emissions and other issues. The 385 institutional investors making up the Carbon Disclosure Project request annual reports from the largest companies around the globe on climate change issues. Allianz, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Merrill Lynch and Verizon are all members of the project.

Verizon originally commissioned the report — a summary of which is available on Verizon's website as a PDF — to focus on the relationship between the communication technologies Verizon produces and investment. The conclusions of the report, however, make it obvious that many companies are going far beyond relying on communication technologies rather than travel, and investors like it.